


If You Were Dying

by Stayawhile



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stayawhile/pseuds/Stayawhile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of A Study in Pink, Sherlock considers his new flatmate.</p><p>A companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/572323">As I Choose Again to Live</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Were Dying

_“If you were dying—if you’d been murdered, in your very last seconds, what would you say?”_

_“Please God, let me live.”_

_“Use your imagination!”_

_“I don’t have to.”_

 

Maybe a bit not good, Sherlock thought to himself. 

It had been a long night, with a solved case, and by all rights he ought to be sleeping; he only slept when a case was finished, and this one was, with a serial killer brought abruptly and very finally to justice.

By one John Watson, former Army doctor, invalided out of Afghanistan and still a crack shot.

_“I don’t have to.”_

He’d dismissed those words, intent on the case, too rapt in his own thought processes, following the chain of logic to its end. They came back to him as he lay in bed, hands steepled, remembering every moment of the past few days, his focus narrowing to one specific element.

John Watson, in a taxi, calling him “extraordinary.”

John Watson, refusing Mycroft’s bribe, with no idea who Mycroft was or how dangerous he could be.

John Watson, unable to picture him as a junkie. Giggling at a crime scene. Leaping over rooftops, his limp forgotten, his cane abandoned for the sheer rush of the chase. 

John Watson, who had no need to imagine his dying thoughts.

=-=-=-=-=-=

Sherlock had long since accepted that he would always be separate and alone. His superior intellect set him apart, and his impatience kept him there. He had never cared to pretend to be less than he was, and if the idiots around him didn’t like it, that was not his problem to solve. His brain had to be occupied with things that mattered: life, death, justice.

Most people were only alive by default, after all. They were born, and they went on breathing because nothing had stopped them yet. A life that was not a conscious decision to live had little meaning as far as Sherlock was concerned. Mere existence, boring, but good enough for the dullards who made up most of the human race.

Murderers were interesting, because they knew life was a choice, and so was death. Murderers loved to draw as close as possible to that knife-edge, to run their fingers along the blade and feel the bright sting of an irrevocable choice. 

Sherlock could understand murderers, even as he despised their cowardice. He had done that dance, observed his own blood welling up from a pinprick in his skin, admired the vivid scarlet of a single drop. He had injected the possibility of death deliberately into his body, flirted with it, very nearly fallen in love with it before making his decision.

It had not been easy, getting clean, choosing life over the sweet oblivion of drugs and the more permanent oblivion that lay beyond them. But it was his choice to make. No one had the right to make it for him. 

Even the dullards had that right. Logically, that meant that catching murderers was not only a suitable challenge for his genius, but an occupation worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Most people had no imagination at all, and John Watson’s response—“please, God, let me live,” had seemed no more than cliché when it was uttered. But as Sherlock considered his new flatmate, reviewing and categorizing every expression and utterance the man had made since they met, those words took on new importance. As a doctor, John had been fully qualified to discern whether his injuries were life-threatening. Sherlock pictured him face down in the desert sand, in pain and bleeding, and very much wanting to live. Choosing to survive injury and suffering and the loss of a career that meant so much to him. Sherlock had observed far more of John than he had revealed on their first cab ride together, and for some reason had retained details that he would generally have dismissed as irrelevant.

Sherlock had seen loss and sorrow in John’s face, and stubborn pride in every line of his body, deep sadness contained by a rock-bottom certainty. John believed in the intrinsic value of life; he had devoted himself to preserving it in others, and would not throw his own away, no matter how little joy it held. His courage was rooted in this fundamental belief. And yet.

He had shot to kill, without hesitation. He had chosen to save one life and end another, and showed no regret. He had chosen, moreover, to save Sherlock’s life, to mete out judgment with his own hand, and afterward, had been able make a joke about it.

=-=-=-=-=-=

_“I don’t have to.”_

Sherlock knew why some people called him a psychopath. Primarily because they were idiots, of course, but also because of his one blind spot, the single gap in his brilliance. Apparently, everyone but him understood how a long-dead stillborn child might still have great emotional significance. 

Sentiment might not be logical, but its existence, its effect on lesser minds, was a fact like any other. John had shared a moment of similar significance, and Sherlock had dismissed it as irrelevant. 

Irrelevant to the case, perhaps, but still revealing, a clue to the puzzle that was John Watson. 

The man was no genius, of course. Intellectually, he would never be Sherlock’s equal. But he knew things that most of the world’s idiots never would. Things that Sherlock had nearly forgotten that night, drawn by his own insatiable curiosity, his aching need to know, his frustration with the tedium of a world that couldn’t keep up with him.

So. A former Army doctor, a crack shot, a flatmate. A partner, in the business of solving crimes, perhaps? Not boring, at any rate. 

Sherlock smiled into the darkness. 

Definitely not boring.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Ariane DeVere at Livejournal, whose transcript of A Study in Pink was a great help.


End file.
